Congresswoman Writes On Broadband, Net Neutrality

An anonymous reader writes "Anna G. Eshoo, a California Democrat representing parts of Silicon Valley, has written an op-ed defending net neutrality and pushing the administration to take more steps to speed up US broadband. From the article: 'A climate of openness and innovation has been the hallmark of the Internet. A decade ago, it's what allowed a startup named Google to compete with better-funded, less technologically advanced competitors. Today, Congress has the responsibility to preserve this climate for the next Google, and for the consumers and the economy that will benefit from its success.'"

Comments

Net Neutrality is important

[vonkohorn]

To begin talking about Net Neutrality, it helps to clarify what the internet is. It’s simply data sent via TCP/IP (the protocol for sending data through routers). Some people host web sites, others connect to their company e-mail, others do other things - it’s all the internet.

Understanding that the internet is just a connection using TCP/IP, then Net Neutrality is simple, too. Net Neutrality simply means that your ISP may not interfere with the internet. They may not censor your packets (the data that is sent via TCP/IP). This means they can’t censor your news, keep you off of Skype, or otherwise interfere with your TCP/IP communications.

Any compromise on this is wrong for two reasons: 1) Your ISP should not have the right to interfere with your free speech, and 2) ISPs should not be able to tax the value creation of the media industry.

ISPs should not be able to interfere with consumer access to media companies, nor tax those companies for access to consumers. ISPs should not be able to interfere with our speech or block our access to the speech of others.

ISPs are in the business of providing internet access, but they don't own the internet; any attempts to eliminate net neutrality would violate our consumer rights and hurt the economy.

Re:Net Neutrality is important

[internettoughguy]

ISPs are in the business of providing internet access, but they don't own the internet; any attempts to eliminate net neutrality would violate our consumer rights and hurt the economy.

They own and control the access points. Many also own the higher level links. Some even own vast chunks of the content flowing across it.. So yes, in effect they do 'own the internet'.

But i do agree they need to be slapped down before things get more out of hand. In today's society the internet is more like a public utility, much like electricity became long ago, and should be treated as such. Not really 'required' for life, but modern life without it would be difficult at best.

Exactly, things that require vast infrastructure, like roads, water, gas, electricity, communications all require antitrust regulation (which imo net neutrality is a type of) because the barrier to entry is so vast. Regulation is justified and infringes no ones property rights, because these things are usually built on vast tracts of public land using public funds.

Re:Net Neutrality is important

[mpeskett]

If I'm using Skype, I wouldn't mind if the ISP gave my packets priority over someone's email.

That would have been a better statement if you'd said you don't mind your ISP giving someone else's Skype call priority over your email. 'Cause I see no reason why you would mind your packets getting pushed up the queue (unless you disagreed with the principle of the thing).

Maybe if they allowed packets to set a flag to volunteer to be given lower priority, then there's no way to game the system into giving your higher priority than the default "everyone is equal" priority.

Except then if that caught on in a useful way, some ass would pop up and not follow the norm, so that their massive downloads seemed faster than everyone else because they were still asking for the same priority as VoIP, while everyone else was voluntarily taking the slow lane.

That there is the reason we can't have nice things like consumer-friendly QoS; someone, somewhere, will always be trying to abuse it.

Re:Opt-ed??

[macraig]

I'd certainly choose to opt out of illiteracy on Slashdot. Is there an app for that?

Re:Wrong, wrong, wrong.

[compro01]

The internet has flourished precisely because the government regulators (aka nannies) have stayed out of it.

It has flourished because all the major players considered that neutrality was a good idea and just went along with it, making government involvement unnecessary. Now the major players believe that neutrality is no longer in their business interests.

The internet is going to be regulated. The only question is to what degree and by who.

Re:Wrong, wrong, wrong.

[The O Rly Factor]

I'm sorry, I would have loved to read your comment, but I wasn't able to. Comcast had throttled the speed at which your comment loaded, since its content was determined to not be in the best interest of Comcast-NBC. Maybe next time say something about 30rock or Outsourced at the end of your comment so it loads a little faster for me please.

Re:Wrong, wrong, wrong.

[CyprusBlue113]

What are you smoking? The internet flourished specifically because of regulation. Look up some of the history of reciprocal comp for example, or the tarifs before cable/dsl were exempted from them, PSCs etc.

Re:Wrong, wrong, wrong.

[Charliemopps]

To be frank, you have no idea what you're talking about. This isn't about the government trying to control the internet, it's about the government telling the ISPs to STOP trying to control the internet. It takes extra equipment, extra staff, extra planning to control whos packets get which priority and keep track of billing. All of this will require and entirely new divisions inside ISPs. It's much simpler to just leave everything alone and stop dinking around with traffic shaping. The ISPs have been lying to and defrauding their customers about what bandwidth they can expect with their given package for about a decade. With the advent of recent high bandwidth services such as Netflix, youtube, etc... it's becoming increasing obvious to the average internet user that "something" is wrong. ISPs are trying to blame their customers or the services their customers are trying to use. But the fact of the matter is, the formula is fairly simple, If they are selling you 5mb/s service, you should be able to get that speed at 6pm on a Saturday night. But we all know how unlikely that really is. ISPs need to upgrade their infrastructure and are instead are trying to block their customers from accessing sites that would allow them to use the service they paid for.